


Hearts on the Loose

by Rubynye



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Artist Steve Rogers, Dancing, F/M, M/M, Multi, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Size Difference, Size Kink, Threesome, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-07-13 12:03:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16017530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: Steve makes friends with a classmate in art school.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Written and posted with all thanks to Azephirin, Caitri, and Withsugarandlime .
> 
> This isn't quite my first story for this fandom, but I did begin it after watching _Captain America: The First Avenger_ , so it's fitting that it's my last story in the MCU fandom. IddyIddyBangBang gave me a wonderful opportunity to finish this, too.
> 
> Also, if you feel like mentioning the terms "Mary Sue" or "self insert", don't bother. I wrote this one for my id, indeed.

Steve settles victoriously onto the wooden classroom chair. After a bad winter he's back in school, feeling as good as he can remember in years, ready to study the finer points of three-dimensional compositions. As his classmates wander in and he glances around the room, he notices a sketchbook on the next chair, open to a drawing of a gracefully curved vase. He looks over, then leans across, studying the numerous short but vigorous pencil strokes, how their varied depths make up the rounded image.

A feminine throat clears above him, and Steve looks up but not very far, over a soft green dress edged in eyelet, up to a heart-shaped face, wide-set hazel eyes and apricot-tinted eyebrows, her shell pink lips curving in a little sideways smile. "What do you think, then?" she asks in a fluting voice as she bends to pick up her sketchbook, and a long pale-coral braid falls over her shoulder, fastened at the end with a casein plastic daisy.

"Uh, I, um, I like the strokes," he blurts, and feels his ears and cheeks flush hot. 

Her smile widens to a bright grin as she sits and boldly glances over at his half-done sketch of the books stacked to one side of the instructor's desk. "I like yours," she says sweetly. "I'm Hannah Bauer." Her accent's a little broader than what Steve usually hears in New York. "Did you learn here to draw like that?"

"Some of it." Steve glances down as he swallows, forcing down the sudden butterflies in his belly, then tips his face up again to offer a proper smile and a hand to shake. "Steve Rogers."

Hannah looks at him with her lantern eyes and folds her hand into his, her fingers delicate, her grip strong. "Nice to meet you," is all she says, but her smile's wide and honest, like she means it.

"Likewise," Steve manages to answer just as Professor Lehner arrives, and definitely means it.

********* 

Bucky whoops when he hears about Hannah, and of course he thinks Steve should ask her on a date. She's easy to talk to and knows a lot about art -- Steve was late home because he and Hannah spent an hour discussing line intensity and modeling -- and she is pretty. Little and slender like Steve, though fortunately healthier, freckles like nutmeg shavings dusted over her cheeks and a heart-shaped mouth widening to a bright smile, and those luminous amber eyes. But Steve thinks about it, and as he finally manages to tell Bucky, "If I ask her and she says no, she might not feel like she can keep talking to me. I like talking to her."

Bucky nods at that, considering it, then rolls his eyes. Steve rolls up the newspaper in his hand and thwacks Buck on the shoulder.

At school, Steve and Hannah have lunch together every day, and sit beside each other three times a week. She tells him that she's from Cincinnati and in town just for this four-month class; her father's will provided generously for her education, so she's spent six of the last eight semesters traveling to various cities, studying at their art schools while living with family friends and far-flung relatives. Steve listens raptly and just a bit enviously as Hannah describes train trips across the prairies and through the mountains, marveling and sketching by the windows, tricks to slip away from her travel guardians for a few moments alone, San Francisco's fogs and Chicago's vigor and Boston's stately museums. 

"Doesn't your mother miss you, though?" Steve asks once. 

Something stiffens in Hannah, down her back and along her arms, as her eyes turn hard and opaque as plastic, her laugh going brittle. "I'm a bad influence on my sisters," she replies, looking past Steve into the distance. "Mother doesn't mind that I'm gone." 

Steve doesn't like this change. Without thinking he touches Hannah's hand, and she blinks her eyes clear, grabs hold and briefly squeezes his fingers before letting go. "Come on," she says briskly, gathering up their sandwich wrappers and paper cups, "let's go in early and get good seats."

Making a note not to ask about her family again, Steve nods and picks up Hannah's satchel along with his, saving his breath to carry both sets of books.

********* 

A couple of weeks later, Steve arrives at the stairwell where he and Hannah usually meet. He waits for a good ten minutes, leafing through a catalogue of Renaissance Italian figure studies, getting ever more worried as she doesn't show up. Having stared at every drawing twice, Steve tucks the book away and sets out to trace Hannah's path from her last class.

He hears her before he sees her, and what he hears, her voice strained and strangely low on, "Absolutely certain, now please let me by," makes him break into a run. Around the turn there's a bend in the hall tucked out of the main flow of traffic, that makes a little alcove where people often stop to talk. That's where Hannah is, wedged into the corner by some tall mook, his arms fencing her in, hands braced on the wall as he leans in. 

"C'mon, sweet thing, one little number?" he insists over her, "I don't think that's a good idea, really," and Steve sees red flash inside his eyelids. 

Hannah's satchel is behind the big jerk, Steve runs up to grab it, jumps back a couple of steps, and shouts, "Hey! Let the lady by!"

The mook turns, baring his teeth in a snarl, but behind his arm Steve sees Hannah's tense, lined face break into a desperately hopeful smile he's never seen on her before. She looks like he's come to save her, and his heart swells with determination to do just that.

Of course he gets told to "Mind your own business, runt," and with two sets of books on his shoulders he's a little weighed down, but Steve stands as straight as he can and repeats the order. "What are you, her boyfriend?" is the sneering response. 

Steve's hands crimp into fists. He shouldn't fight in school, he doesn't want to get expelled, but some things are just wrong. "Doesn't matter either way, she asked you to let her go, you let her go." 

"I oughtta drag you out back and teach you a lesson," snarls the mook, but as he turns to threaten Steve his hand comes off the wall, and Hannah ducks through the opening and dashes to Steve's side, grabbing his arm before he can take the masher up on the offer. 

"Try learning one," Steve calls as Hannah swings him around with her momentum, but lets her haul him off at a pretty fast walk, not quite running away. Arm in clutching arm, they hurry down their stairwell and through the doors, listening the whole way for heavy footsteps behind them. 

Once they're out in the spring sunshine, Hannah slumps against Steve with a gusty sigh, and delight whacks him with what he'd been too angry to notice before: Hannah's soft sleeve and slender arm folded around his, her warm weight all down his side, the rich fresh scent of her hair. Steve startles from his nose in Hannah's hair down to his toes in his shoes as Hannah leans sweetly on him for an astonishing moment.

Then she lets go, reaching for her satchel, and Steve hands it over. She starts forward again, heading for the nearest canteen, and even though he's got a sandwich squashed under his books Steve decides it'll keep and keeps pace with her. "You all right?" he asks, and Hannah nods, facing ahead, her smile small and closed-mouthed, her eyes still wide and pinched at the corners.

It isn't until Steve puts down a mug of soup and a roll and Hannah pays for them with a decisiveness that he doesn't bother arguing with, until he follows her out onto the cheerfully noisy patio to sit among their fellow students, that Hannah finally smiles for real and says, "Steve, thank you," her face smooth and happy again, her eyes crinkling now.

"Thanks for lunch," Steve answers, successfully not stammering, and Hannah finally grins.

********* 

Spring classes wind to an end, their final projects are evaluated, and both Steve and Hannah earn good marks. Canvas portfolio tucked beneath her arm, her violet dress and hair ribbon fluttering in the breeze, Hannah looks picturesque and lovely, and Steve wishes he dared kiss her and makes a mental note to draw this image of her.

She holds out her free hand, smiling, and Steve takes it, folding his fingers around hers. That's when he feels paper crinkle in his palm; he glances down, curling his hand around the note, and when he looks up Hannah is well away, striding towards the cab-stand.

He almost calls after her, almost tries to catch up. Instead he unfolds the note and reads it, making sure it doesn't blow from his hand. 

_Dear Steve,  
This is terribly forward of me, but I leave in six days. That isn't much time to see New York, but I intend to try. Meet me tomorrow right here, under the sycamore by the West Entrance, 10:30 A.M.? See you, I do hope! Hannah._

Up ahead Hannah is swinging herself into a cab, but at the last moment she glances back at Steve, eyes wide and lips parted, and he nods quickly, trading smile for smile. He'll be here at 10:30 tomorrow, no matter what.

********* 

"Good! Then you can bring her dancing tomorrow night," Bucky says, chopping eggs for salad. 

"It's not like we're gonna spend the whole day together," Steve protests, watching Bucky's hands move, big and knuckly and graceful, the knife blurring as he demolishes each egg. "And I'm a terrible dancer, despite all your best efforts."

"For a smart guy, Steve…" Bucky pauses to point at him with the knife tip and a blue glare. "You can be a damn blockhead sometimes. She put herself forward, she even gave you a note. That's a lot of effort if all she wants is an escort to a museum."

"You're a dreamer, Barnes." Steve gets up to head for the bedroom, done with letting Bucky inflate his hopes, all so he can fall all the harder.

"You're a chicken, Rogers!" Bucky shouts after Steve, prickling down his spine, and if Bucky were anyone else Steve would spin on his heel and give them what for. He can't help a growl, but he sets down his foot and keeps going, refusing to respond.

********* 

Steve shows up at 10:25 on the dot, to find Hannah already waiting, in the same soft green dress she wore when he first met her, a white Bakelite rose fastening her braid's end above her ear, shiny black shoes buckled onto her delicate feet. She grins at him and he grins back as he asks, "So where would you like to go first?" Before she answers, Hannah folds her arm through his, and his ears go hot around the edges.

It's 7:45 in the evening, long golden light streaming across the city and the sky just tinted with deeper blue in the west, when Steve realizes they really have spent the day together: down at the Metropolitan, watching a forgettable movie, sharing a hot brown at a diner because neither of them could finish it alone. He sits in the hard slick booth, watching Hannah dab her shell-pink lips with a napkin, and tries to think of a way for the day not to end.

Hannah finishes her glass of juice, and Steve watches her swallow till his mouth waters and he has to swallow hard himself. "It's nearly evening," she says, and here comes the goodbye Steve was expecting. He props up his smile as his stomach sinks. "I realized I've never seen your sketchbooks, besides the one you had in class. You have the rest at your place, right?"

A confused "Yeah…?" falls out of Steve's mouth.

"I'd love to see them," Hannah says. "My aunt's gone on a weekend trip, so no one's expecting me home, and if it gets late I'm sure you'll escort me back, right?" Steve nods dumbly, mesmerized by Hannah's radiant smile. "Then let's go see your sketches!"

They pay in a blur and dash to the train arm in arm, and it's not until Steve's sitting on a rumbling bench tucked beside Hannah as she examines the design of the cigarette ad across from them, that he lets himself really believe that she didn't say goodbye. As she leans her head on his shoulder he looks down at the porcelain line parting her pale red hair, and only the ache in his feet from so much walking and the usual soreness in various joints let him know he's not dreaming.

"What do you think?" Hannah asks, about the ad on the train, and Steve gives himself a little shake and the design his best artist's analysis. They chat about ads they've liked through two train changes and about ones they would make as they stride through the deepening blue and brightening sodium yellow of the city night. Steve watches Hannah talk about diagonals and sight lines, her eyes golden in the streetlights, her delicate hand fluttering counterpoint to her words, and wishes fervently she were staying for another class, another year, maybe always. He nods and answers and tries not to look too badly like he's mooning as badly as he is.

Up the stairs, and Steve goes second and doesn't let himself watch Hannah swaying ahead of him. "And here we are," he puffs at last, a little winded by the climb, especially when he's been struck breathless by such an astonishing girl. He looks down as he reaches for his pocket, and two shiny buckled shoes appear between his, two little fingertips slide under his chin, two shell-pink lips flicker into a smile before pursing as Hannah tips him forward into a kiss. One sweet press of lips on lips flickers through his whole body like a match dropped into gasoline, heat rushing down his skin, his dick twitching to rapt attention. 

A heartbeat later his whole body stiffens with worry she'll find him ungentlemanly, and as he falters in the kiss Hannah hums a questioning noise. Her ingertips brush his adam's-apple and Steve shudders helplessly, a low rumble breaking loose from the back of his throat, his fingers curling around her soft-sleeved shoulders. Hannah purrs, that's the only word for it, as she spreads her fingers around his bicep and throat, as she parts her lips and invites him in for a warm tender taste of her.

He gasps and she pulls away with a little giggle; he looks down helplessly at her shoes between his as they stand there together, still holding onto each other. "Good, mmm, good," she murmurs at length. "I was starting to get worried."

Steve looks up at that, and finds Hannah's eyes sparkling like tea in sunlight, her lips shining damp like rain washed petals. "Worried about what?" He has no idea what kind of dopey grin's on his face as he fishes his key out and opens the door by feel, unable to look away from her as she pushes her fingers between his. The door falls open and they step inside and Steve kicks it shut behind him, his eyes and head full of Hannah.

Right up until he hears Bucky's startled, "Whoa, hey!" as Hannah's head whips around so fast her braid flies free, as she presses her free hand to her mouth and her eyes go round.

Steve gives up and looks. Bucky looks good in just a towel around his hips, another over his hair, his arms still up, muscles defined by the pose. Bucky always looks good, even with damp hair sticking every which way as he lowers the towel, and he's not even blushing as he blinks at them, his lush mouth opening and closing in surprise. He recovers his poise, tipping his head back just a bit on his long strong neck, and Hannah squeaks against her palm, her fingers twitching in Steve's hold. 

Steve can't even get mad. He knows how touchable Bucky looks, how good it feels to run fingers through that tactile chest hair, over those gorgeously defined muscles. He sees Hannah's hungry gaze, looks at Bucky again and catches a flashing glance, maybe an apology, before Bucky's eyelids hood his evening blue eyes and his lips pull into a little smirk. Steve should probably just let go of Hannah's hand and back right on out the door. 

He starts to let go, and Hannah tightens her fingers on his; he looks at her again and she's looking at him now, smiling wide, her eyes sparkling merrily. She steps forward, pulling Steve's hand in hers, and he stumbles after her. "You must be Bucky," she says, bold as brass, and despite it all, because of it all, Steve wants her all the more, surging in his blood. "Steve talks about you all the time."

"And you must be Hannah," Bucky answers, tossing the towel over his shoulder to offer his hand. Hannah sets hers on his palm, surrounded on all sides by its expanse until he cups his fingers around hers. As he lifts her hand to his lips she giggles delight, and they look unfairly gorgeous together, setting Steve's pulse throbbing in his ears. "Steve told me you're as beautiful as your artwork," Bucky murmurs, and just, good Lord.

Steve wasn't going to say anything, but he can't hold back, "Lay it on any thicker, Barnes, and you're gonna need a trowel." They both look at him, Hannah's mouth shut, Bucky's just a little parted, and Steve hoists an eyebrow and adds, "Weren't you going dancing?"

Bucky eyebrow-lifts right back and parries, "Weren't you and Hannah here coming with me?"

Steve looks at Hannah. Bucky looks at Hannah. Hannah slowly smiles wide, and Steve thinks if she had whiskers she'd lick them. "I'm not much for dancing," she says, and there's that purr in her voice again, "But I was wondering… you two share everything, it sounds like?"

She glances between them as she asks, and now Bucky grins as he answers, "Depends, pretty lady. How do you feel about sharing?"

For the first time a blush wells rosy in Hannah's cheeks, but she keeps her chin up and looks Bucky square in the eye. "Right now I think I like it."

And they look at Steve, in unison, like they practiced it maybe. "What about you, Steve?" Bucky's voice is the kind of brisk Steve knows would be soft if Bucky didn't know he needs it to brace against. "You okay with my horning in on your evening?"

"Anything's better than dancing." As if Steve's heart isn't banging against his breastbone, as if he isn't desperately hard in his slacks, as if he doesn't want this. "Whatever Hannah says goes." If this really is what he thinks it is.

"I say come here," Hannah orders as Bucky smiles over her head, and Steve obligingly lets her reel him in for another sweet hot kiss. Her lips are unbearably soft, his heart racing as their tongues touch. Bucky's solid beside her, beside them, and Steve nearly reaches up to rest a steadying hand on his warm chest, until the realization of what that would reveal jars through him. They've done this before, with Becky and Dahlia, but both times Bucky found the girls and somehow explained what he and Steve are to each other, exactly how close they are, before he even introduced either to Steve. 

Steve breaks the kiss on a gasp, watching Hannah's eyelashes flutter over her eyes gone dark as tortoiseshell, his mind racing a mile a minute. He told her all about Bucky except for this, it wasn't relevant, no point in risking it. Now it's past time and more, but how can he? As Hannah's eyes flutter open, catching the light, as her bright smile fades to puzzlement at whatever's on Steve's face, he takes a deep breath and babbles out, "Hannah, before we get any further, I mean, I have to tell you, you hafta know --"

"How glad we are to have you here," Bucky smoothly interrupts, wrapping his arm around Hannah's waist, draping the other across Steve's shoulders. "Ain't we, Stevie?" Steve looks up, right into the stirring familiarity of Bucky's eyes gone midnight dark as he swoops in for a kiss. 

Steve says "Mmph!" into Bucky's mouth, but he can't not respond, opening to Bucky's slick push of tongue, tipping his head back into the crook of Bucky's elbow. Bucky hums in answer, low and rumbly and amused, and Hannah's fingers curl tighter between Steve's, not rigid with shock, not jerking away in disgust. 

Bucky pulls back, smacking a closed-mouthed buss to the corner of Steve's stunned mouth, and turns his bedroom eyes on Hannah as Steve blinks his open to find them smiling at each other, sin reflecting sweet sin. "Kiss me like that," Hannah demands, pushing up onto her toes.

Bucky does, tipping her back in the curve of his arm, and all Steve can think as he watches is how much he wants to draw them at it, and how badly he needs out of his pants.


	2. Chapter Two

The last item Hannah takes off, standing by Steve's bed with him, skin pressed to bare skin from knees to cheeks, is her white rose hair clip. She drops it into Steve's palm, curls her arm around him and lays her hand between his shoulder blades, her waist curved into the crook of his elbow; he blinks hazily, their noses touching tip to tip, her rounded breasts soft against his bony chest. Her broadening smile brushes his stunned mouth, and he tilts his head to kiss her again, licking between her soft sweet lips as he blindly sets the clip with her carefully laid out clothes. 

"God Fucking Almighty," Bucky growls from his bed, a mattress twice as wide as Steve's bedstead, slowly stroking himself as he watches them. "Look at you two tangled up together, pretty as dolls." Groaning, Steve turns to tell him not to blaspheme, gets sidetracked by Hannah's warm giggle into his neck, and completely derailed by the sight of Bucky draped sideways, crumpled towels framing his long strong legs and feet, the lamp by his bed throwing him into chiaroscuro relief. All Steve can do is stammer uselessly, hugging Hannah to him probably too tightly, but he can't let go of her, satiny skin over delicate bones, any more than he can stop watching Bucky's raw-knuckled fist slide up and down his purple-hard dick. "Two babydolls all for me."

That finally jars Steve's tongue loose, no matter how lewdly handsome Bucky looks. "I ain't a doll, Buck," he grumbles. There are times he'll be Bucky's dollface, times he downright enjoys it, but right now with Hannah in his arms, he wants her to see him as a man, no matter how little of one.

Bucky just smirks wider, used to Steve's tetchy moments. Hannah seems to understand him too, pulling her hand down his spine and along his hip, leaving a trail of heat across his skin so Steve's eyes flutter from sheer sensation. She pushes her hand between their bellies and wraps it around the base of his dick, and Steve has to haul in a noisy breath under the press of her fine fingers. "I'll be your best doll," Hannah murmurs into Steve's chin, little hard edges of teeth sparking in the heat of her mouth, and Steve gasps as he shudders into another slick hot kiss, Bucky's pleased rumble echoing in his ear.

His head so light and wobbly he hopes desperately it's all arousal and not incipient asthma, Steve pulls himself from this kiss, a bit regretfully, to check his breathing in a long careful inhale, to watch Hannah smile up at him like he's worth looking at. Over on his bed, Bucky curls two beckoning fingers, and Hannah turns just enough, keeping her arm wrapped around Steve's waist and her hand on his dick, to tow him those three vast steps across the room. Bucky grins wide, letting go of himself to hold out both arms, and Hannah lets go of Steve to fold down into Bucky's invitation, porcelain pale and freckle-dusted in the tanned frame of his arm. He keeps the other one up, she turns towards Steve as she offers her arm too, and Steve kneels and settles into their hold, facing Hannah across Bucky's broad chest, her fingers stroking through his hair.

Hannah stretches, sighing happily, draping her back over Bucky's front as she grins at Steve, giving him his first good look at her out of her clothes: the freckles sprinkled along her neck and arms, her high breasts and rosy nipples, her small waist and the curve of her hips, the soft red triangle of hair between her ivory thighs. The low rise of her belly is creamy pale, but her shoulders and chest are patched with pink, her neck and face glowing red in a blush that makes Steve' cheeks and ears burn sympathetically. "Like what you see?" she asks, arch and hopeful, and Steve doesn't even try to talk, just nods in delighted awe.

Bucky nuzzles her ear and she giggles, wiggling so his dick pops out from behind her thigh, and Steve's about to comment when he realizes she's still moving - Bucky is turning on his side, sliding Hannah onto Steve so she lands with a little "oof," belly to belly, just enough weight for a pleasant press.

"Hey!" Steve admonishes, as Bucky smirks and shrugs unrepentantly. "You okay?" he asks Hannah, who nods cheerily, so Steve feels a little more confident about slipping his arms around her, pulling her in tight. "Buck here has a terrible habit of tossing folks around," he tells her, ignoring the ridiculous eyebrow-waggling face Bucky pulls over Hannah's head, "but he's mostly harmless, really."

Bucky growls and Hannah giggles against Steve's mouth. "Perfectly harmless," he murmurs as he wraps his arms around them, curving his hand to Steve's side, holding them warmly together. "But Stevie here, you've gotta keep an eye on him."

Hannah picks her head up just as Steve was thinking of daring to deepen the kiss; she glances over her shoulder at Bucky, and at least Steve gets the consolations of her profile in lamplight and her sweet-scented braid softly unraveling against his cheek. "Really?" She looks back at Steve, bright sparks dancing in her deep amber eyes, and he probably looks harmless and gormless, what with his mouth falling open. "What do I need to watch for?"

Bucky brushes his answer over her shoulder between kisses, his eyes sparkling too as he pins Steve down with his nightfall blue gaze. "He's full of surprises."

"I like surprises," Hannah breathes, and proceeds to surprise Steve with a downright pushy kiss of her own, licking boldly into his mouth, tightening her arms around him. Steve gasps helplessly and kisses her in return as she tangles her sleek legs with his, as he's braced by Bucky's strong arm. His dick throbs against the little cushion of her belly, but he doesn't reach for it, he'd rather fill his hands with her fine-textured skin and the delicate architecture of her bones, the knobs of her spine like satin-draped pearls, her ribs narrow arches beneath his fingers. She grips his shoulders as she sighs under his touch, her voice lilting wordlessly between their panting mouths as he strokes her back and arms, her sides and hips, as she twists sleekly like a horizontal dance and swings her thigh over his and -- _oh_ , Steve thinks or maybe gasps, his mind blanked like a sketch dropped in solvent as she presses her hips down, a hot slick oval branding his thigh, as she smears her tender wet mouth across his cheek and ear, murmuring urgently, "Touch me, please, touch me."

"Hannah," Steve breathes, and Bucky rumbles low beside him as he caresses the curve of her bottom; eyes squeezed tight as he concentrates, alert for any hint of her discomfort, he strokes her tenderest skin and the margin of her nether lips. Hannah rocks her hips towards his hand, pressing her mouth encouragingly to his jaw, but the angle's not good, Steve can't do more than dip his fingertips. He wouldn't mind it, just touching her slick heated folds, his palm curved to her plush asscheek, but her next breath's a frustrated kitten-growl, and he pulls himself together, pulls his hand up and slides it between their bellies like she did before, curling his other arm around her shoulders, holding her close as he can.

Drenched raw-silk curls, that turgid little bump, and Steve gets it right this time, as Hannah shudders atop him, sucking in a gusty breath, a cry rising in her voice. "There you go," Bucky murmurs, and Steve pries his eyes open to see Bucky watching his face; as he strokes Hannah, listening her sighs rise and unfurl, he stares back into Bucky's night-sky gaze, until her hair streaming over his cheek entices him to shut his eyes again, feeling her as she buries her face in his shoulder and shifts atop him, tracking every quiver of pleasure rippling through her. 

"More, more, please, more," she moans, tingling Steve's shoulder, and he's not sure how to obey, but Bucky chuckles a little and leans in, kissing Hannah's shoulder as Steve blinks and sees Bucky's tanned hand settle on her lower back in a wordless question. Hannah nods, and Bucky's hand slides out of sight, its destination obvious even before Hannah shivers, her fingers flexing on Steve's shoulders as Bucky's knuckles nudge Steve's. She noses Steve's cheek and he turns his head to kiss her, trembling with her, all lit up with her delight; he keeps pace as Bucky chuckles darkly and Hannah pours a stream of sweet cries into his mouth, as she rocks into their hands and pleasure tightens around his ribs and sings through his blood, until she screams and drops her head and quakes under their combined touch.

Bucky tugs his hand free, his first two fingers glistening in the lamplight as he slides them between his smirking lips, and Steve's dick throbs like he could come just like this. "Want more?" Steve asks Hannah with the little air he has, his voice a thready rush.

She kisses his shoulder and comes up smiling, sweat glittering on her forehead. "You inside me," she tells him confidently, "just let me get my purse."

"Allow me, pretty lady," Bucky says with eye-roll-inducing gallantry, and Hannah turns her smile towards him. Steve watches them kiss, hot desire fringed with envy, the artist in his head taking composition notes, the fella wanting both of their mouths on his; he watches Bucky pull back smiling and climb to his feet, and watches Hannah watch because Bucky naked is always worth looking at, always. 

"My figure drawing's going to improve so much," Hannah murmurs, a little breathless herself, and Steve laughs with her as she turns back to him, right up until she kisses him. 

Bucky folds back onto the mattress, murmuring, "Here you go," and Hannah breaks the kiss to reach up, opening her purse one-handed, dipping her hand in. She pulls out two rubbers in striped paper packets, tucked between her fingers, and Steve hears himself gasp.

"Well, wow," Bucky says as Steve thinks it, "you're the one full of surprises."

Hannah tenses a little under Steve's hands, hoisting her head so bravely sympathy pangs through him. "I try to think ahead," she says, but there's something brittle in it, her eyes cloudy with a bad memory.

Steve remembers that guarded look, and now he can banish it with a better touch, stroking down her spine, up around her waist, pulling her close again. "A lady always does," he says, and she blinks at him, and smiles, her eyes clearing. "I've heard, I mean," he adds, and Hannah grins, shaking her head into a laugh, and kisses him lightly.

"I'm glad you don't mind," she says, and Steve shakes his head, because how could he, and kisses her again, and again, her lips parting over his, his neck arching, right up until fingers slide down his dick and he jumps. 

Big familiar fingers. Hannah looks over the perfect oval of her shoulder, Steve looks down the lovely slope of her back, and they find Bucky rolling a rubber onto him, looking up through long lashes as he settles it with a firm stroke so Steve shivers and leaks a little, slicking it up inside. "We sure don't mind, do we?" Bucky pats Steve's thigh. "A little foresight is a beautiful thing."

Hannah laughs, petting Bucky's cheek, dropping the other rubber into his hand as she runs her forefinger down the dimple in his chin. "Thank you," she tells him before turning back to Steve, and if he thought she'd looked hungry before, she looks gloriously ravenous now, smiling down at him.

She starts to wiggle off him and he catches her waist in both hands, his fingers almost touching. "Can we stay like this?" he asks. "I want, I mean, I like how you feel on top of me." Less chance of an asthma attack, he doesn't add, as he plants his feet on the mattress. She nods, loose hair waving in a luminous curtain, and as she settles her hands either side of his ribs she closes her eyes in concentration. Steve couldn't shut his if he tried, watching Hannah rock back carefully atop him, how her spine bows, the light glowing through her coral hair, her breasts soft in shadow, her lips parting and her eyebrows pulling together as she tenderly nudges him. He opens his mouth to gasp and loses his breath in a moan as she pushes down, flexing around him, gripping him in rippling heat. 

"Steve," Hannah moans back to him, a beautiful wave surging up her spine as she tosses her head back, and he groans at the sight and the feel of her, so much at once. Bucky sets a supportive hand on her back, fingers overlapping with Steve's, and Hannah rocks down again as Steve's hips rise to meet hers. Her eyelids lift just enough to show gleaming crescents as she grins breathlessly, murmuring, "Yes," and shoves herself back into the next stroke, smacking down hard.

Her wave runs up Steve's spine, pulling him into a taut arch, rocking his head back into the pillow, and Hannah huffs a happy noise and does it again, slamming hotly onto him so his eyes roll back. "Hold me up?" Steve hears her ask, and Bucky rumble some kind of agreement; she pulls her hands from Steve's sides to slap them against the wall, sighing as she shifts the angle, and when they rock together this time she cries out high as her breasts brush his cheeks. 

Moaning, he suckles one, custardy under his lips, nipple swollen firm on his tongue. Hannah whimpers "Yes, yes," as their thrusts blur into one rolling surge, as Steve clutches her with shaking fingers and shapes his mouth around her tender breast, as he digs his heels into the mattress for leverage and plunges himself as deeply in her fluttering heat as he can get, over and over and over as his whole body tenses with delight, winding tighter and tighter.

Until it breaks, crashing over him, and he groans into Hannah's breastbone, her heart pounding against his cheek as he pulses with ecstasy, as she whoops and wrings it out of him. Steve gasps over her sweet warm skin, his ribs shuddering like they'll burst, and Hannah grips his shoulders and pushes up, her hair falling silky around his forehead as she curls away, puffing over his face. He can feel her looking him over even before he pushes his eyelids up and his mouth into a smile, and the furrow between her eyes smooths out as she smiles back. "Wow," is all he can manage, but she understands his inadequate blurt and leans in for a kiss, stretching out her full sleek warmth atop him.

Even as he's kissing Hannah, though, his pulse drumming in his ears, Steve hears Bucky breathing just that bit rougher, knows just how up Buck is for his turn. Steve gently curls his hands around her upper arms and pries her up a little, and she kisses his nose and nods and turns, shifting out of Steve's grip to reach up. Bucky pulls her over, smiling as he lifts her onto his lap, and winks at Steve before shutting his eyes properly; Steve sits himself up, watching them kiss to distract himself from the annoying tug of slipping off the rubber. At least his hands only shake a little, and he gets to watch Bucky cup Hannah's head in one hand, her bright hair streaming between his fingers, and spread the other out low over her back. Watching her tremble and tighten her arms around Bucky's sides, Steve remembers being in both their places, kissing each of them, holding Bucky before and Hannah just now, and shivers too as a last ripple of pleasure rolls through him.

Their kiss breaks, both of them reach for Steve at the same time, and he has to grin a little as he slides his hand forward, meshing his fingers with Hannah's, Bucky's curling around both. "You two," Bucky murmurs warmly, looking at them both, Hannah on his lap and Steve behind her, "that was a sight to see. What do you say, pretty lady, let's give Stevie here a show?"

"Crying out loud, Buck," Steve's conscience prods him to say, though Hannah giggles and nods, "you just think about making Hannah feel good, all right? Forget I'm here."

Bucky opens his mouth mulishly, but it's Hannah who says, "But it makes it even better," squeezing Steve's fingers as she adds, "I could feel how you liked Bucky watching us."

"I like you," Steve insists, ostentatiously ignoring Bucky, which gets a lot easier when Hannah leans over to kiss him one more time, tender lips and soft brush of tongue. 

"I like you too," she murmurs, "and I'm right here." She looks up at Bucky again, and Steve didn't know her smile could sharpen like that. "And right now I'd like to put Bucky through his paces."

Steve grins helplessly. Bucky grins too, lifting his hand from theirs to pick something up. "Your steed awaits," he says grandly, tossing the rubber at Steve, who catches it before even thinking. 

"Nice horsie," Steve comments as he rips open the packet, mostly to hear Hannah laugh again, and maybe a little to see Bucky smirk at him over her head. He leans forward, getting his hands around Bucky's dick, which twitches as Bucky hisses through his teeth, cocksure composure slipping a moment. Steve glances sideways at Hannah as he rolls the rubber onto Bucky, and though she drapes her arms around Bucky's neck she's watching Steve's hands, her smile gone hungry again, like seeing the two of them together does it for her. Becky was like that too, and Steve kinda likes it on a girl, liking building on liking. When her eyes flick up to his face he winks as he squeezes a little, just hard enough for them to both feel Bucky shudder; Bucky's looking down too, so Steve sneaks in for a quick kiss to his parted lips, and doesn't know who moans louder, Buck or Hannah.

Yeah, he likes this. A lot. Steve pulls himself away, smacking Bucky's shoulder. "Treat my girl right," he says, then hears himself as both their eyes widen, and wonders if he's said too much. 

And then Hannah smiles, wide and bright, right at Steve; Bucky smiles at her, sharing the sight of her with Steve in a heavy-lidded glance, murmurs, "You bet, Stevie," against her forehead so her eyes flutter closed, and presses a kiss there, a line of soft kisses down her cheek to her mouth as he lays her down softly as a feather. She sighs happily, winding her legs around his waist, and damn but they're a sight. Steve's dick twitches earlier than he expected, and he grips the bed sheet with both hands and doesn't touch himself. He's had his turn. This is for Bucky, and more for Hannah, as much as she wants.

He also doesn't let himself go get paper and pencil, despite the flex of Bucky's ass as he sinks slowly into her, the rising curve of Hannah's back, how her hair spills out as she throws her head back gasping, how her lips part like unfurling petals. Bucky presses his mouth to her temple, his forehead furrowing as he pulls back just as slowly, out and out, his unsheathed dick gleaming wet between them, and then in again as slow as he can go. Hannah arches into each stroke, shuddering top to toe, little and fragile under Bucky's breadth, and Steve watches their thighs tense against each other's and wonders if that's how he looks too when he's got Bucky over and inside him, when he digs his fingers into Bucky's shoulders and wordlessly begs for more.

Right around when Steve would, Hannah whimpers, digging her heels into Bucky's back. "Please, faster, faster?" And Steve throbs, grinning helplessly even as sympathy aches inside him, because he knows before Bucky says it --

"Nah," Bucky murmurs, and she groans incredulously. "Nah, pretty lady." His voice is shaking, it's hard on him too to go so slowly, but he doesn't budge an inch; Hannah tosses her head and digs her nails into his nape, keening in frustration, and Bucky just puffs a low laugh into her hair and keeps up that dreadful wonderful slow pace.

"Steve!" Hannah shouts, high and breathless, "Steve, make him _move_!" 

He could, he knows how, but he's not the one aching and glowing in gorgeous desperation, so just for a moment he sides with Bucky. "Ain't he the worst?" Sorta, anyway. "Just terrible."

"He's amazing," Hannah whimpers, her voice cracking as Bucky grins openmouthed and presses his parted lips to her forehead. "He's astounding and ravishing and I can't take it and I just wish he'd _fuck_ me!" And well, wow, that filthy curse from her sweet mouth. It sends a dark pulse through Steve's blood, he can see it shudder down Bucky's rippling back. 

He always was the soft touch of the two of them, Steve thinks as he gets up on his knees and gently bites Bucky's ear, inhaling the clean sweat dampening his hair. "C'mon, Buck," Steve murmurs, just loud enough for Hannah to hear too, and listens to her moan lilt high as Bucky's hips smack into hers. "Give the lady what she wants," as he curls his hand over Bucky's steely-tensed asscheek, pulls it back and lays one hard blow right on the fullest curve.

Bucky groans and slams forward, Hannah screams gloriously, gasps and shrieks again, and Steve tumbles himself backwards out of their way as Bucky fucks her through it, hips rolling fiercely, then drops his forehead to the mattress and shudders through his own, as Hannah exhales little cries and pets his neck with languid fingers and shapes her panting mouth into a smile. She drops her other hand to the mattress, curling her fingers invitingly, and Steve lays his hand over hers, her palm damp and soft beneath his.

Bucky gasps and lifts his head enough to rumble, "What'cha you doing all the way over there?" planting his elbow and gripping Steve's forearm.

"Coming over here." Steve gives in to them, rocks forward on his knees and slumps into their arms once again, his forehead pressed to Hannah's and his shoulder to Bucky's, their every breath and shudder quivering right through him as they come down from coming. When Bucky pulls from them to get rid of the rubber Hannah throws her other arm over Steve's ribs, and when he comes back Bucky wraps his arms around them both, so Hannah's tucked between their chests, everyone's legs tangled together. Steve's mind goes smooth and blank as a new sheet of paper as he lies there, warm and cozy, holding and being held and just breathing them in, sweat and sex and sweet warm skin.

Eventually, though, Hannah shifts a little, reluctantly saying, "I adore this, but I need to get up." 

"Oh, yeah, of course." Steve pulls himself away from her as fast as he can, and she shimmies out from between him and Bucky, stands up, and smiles over her sharp-bladed shoulder. Bucky waves to her, and they both watch raptly as she sways out of their bedroom, the soft shift of her ass, her delicate limbs and sure strides. They watch right up until the door shuts behind her; then Bucky rolls onto Steve, pinning him to the bed as he kisses him as deeply as he can get.

"Saints alive, Steve," Bucky mutters, wrapping his arms under Steve's back, straddling his hips, and dives back into his mouth before Steve can say a thing. "She's amazing." Another plunging kiss and Steve's gasping and hot all over by the time Bucky tells him, "she's like your redheaded double."

"C'mon, Bucky," Steve tips his head away from the next kiss, because he has to defend Hannah. "She's a hell of a lot better than that."

"Than you?" Steve blinks, looking up into Bucky's midnight-sky eyes, the serious downslope of his wet red mouth. "She's actually as good. And that's amazing." Steve has no idea what to say to that, not that he needs to bother, with Bucky's tongue back in his mouth again, Bucky's hard thighs slung alongside his hips. The sound of running water frames Bucky's harsh breaths as he kisses Steve dizzy, until Steve's gulping sex-tinged air in a futile attempt not to get worked up again.

It's only the thought that it seems rude to start again without Hannah that gets Steve to wiggle away from Bucky's mouth and hands and chest pressed to his, Bucky's legs folded around his hips. That and his empty belly, which grumbles loudly; Bucky presses his grin to Steve's ribs, winding those strong arms around him for a moment more, his hair damp raw silk below Steve's heart.

Then he lets go with, "Guess it's time for a dinner break," as the water stops, and Steve stumbles up, smiling like an idiot, and makes himself go make sure Hannah has everything she needs.

********* 

Two more quick wash-ups, one borrowed tee-shirt, and the tiniest mother-of-pearl-handled hairbrush Steve's ever seen, and he's sitting on the couch in his boxers, brushing Hannah's damp hair as Bucky's undershirt falls off her shoulder, pooling around her hips like a scandalously short tunic, as she tips her head back on her graceful neck and watches Bucky cook dressed in nothing but a battered flour sack apron. "You should draw him like that," she suggests at length, as they run their eyes over Bucky's bare backside, as he stirs soup and fries eggs and preens under their regard. 

"And get arrested for manufacturing lewd materials," Steve points out, handing her the tiny hairbrush, gathering up the mass of her glowing red hair in his happy hands. "You should draw him, he'd like it."

"If you'd get arrested, what would happen to me?" Hannah tips her head back further, her eyelids drooping low as Steve works his fingers through her hair and tries to remember how to braid. "Mmm, Steve, that feels nice."

"You feel nice," fails entirely at suaveness, but Hannah doesn't seem to mind, smiling so invitingly Steve leans in to kiss her. This is all so nice, Hannah here with him and Bucky like they've been doing this forever, and indecent at the same time, all three of them nearly bare with the evening obviously just begun, his skin prickling all over with saucy warmth. Comfort and naughtiness enhance each other as Hannah chuckles against his tingling lips and tips her head forward again; Steve takes a steadying breath and loosely braids her hair, and when he's done lifts it to press his lips to the almost colorless wisps on her nape. She hums happily, pressing back into Steve's kiss, and he could absolutely keep doing this for a good long time.

"Ding ding ding," Bucky shouts from the stove. "Supper's ready!" He spins around smiling, setting mugs of soup on the table. "Dished up by the prettiest cook in Brooklyn, if I say so myself."

"And you do say so yourself." Steve heaves himself up; he's been sitting long enough to go a little stiff in various joints, but covers the wince with a smile, and Hannah's answering smile as she takes his hand warms him better than liniment, her arm folded through his more soothing than morphine. 

Bucky's grin shines as he sets a sandwich-laden plate down by the pepper and salt, the apron covering just enough of his beautiful body to tantalize. "Gonna argue, Steve?"

"Would, but I'd be lying." Steve pulls the best chair out for Hannah to sit, but before he can struggle with pushing it back in Bucky comes around the table, nudging Steve aside with his hip as he pushes her in. Steve elbows him lightly in the side, enjoying the firm resistance of muscle and the way Hannah's eyes shine as she watches them clown around and giggles into her hand.

"Don't you know it." Bucky nuzzles Steve's hair, brushing a quick kiss over his temple, before strutting back to the stove, enjoying being ogled. 

"Mmm, handsome and handy." Hannah smiles at the soup and sandwiches like they've taken her to the Ritz. "Thank you for our supper, Bucky."

Bucky bows low with a grand flourish. "A thousand welcomes, pretty lady."

Pulling out the spare chair, Steve pauses to roll his eyes, glances down and finds Hannah's hand held out to him; he folds his around hers, looking up her graceful arm as he turns, and she sets her other hand atop as she smiles at him bright as a floodlight. "Thank you for bringing me home with you," she tells Steve, dumbfounding and delightful. 

Only one thought rattles around his dazzled head, so Steve gives up and says it. "Thank you for coming home with me." For a moment there's nothing but her hands around his and her lantern eyes. 

"Would you eat already?" Bucky asks sharply, belying his fond smile, his cheek leaned on his fist. Hannah laughs and tugs Steve towards his chair before letting go to pick up her spoon.

"What, is it gonna run away?" Steve can hardly speak for grinning, between Bucky and Hannah and the warm summer night. He could do this just about forever.

********* 

"You'll still show me your sketchbooks, right?" Hannah asks halfway through supper, which makes Bucky throw his head back laughing and Steve's ears burn familiarly hot. He nods, smiling stupidly, and she shines a smile back at him. 

After the few dishes are done they spend a little time that way, tucked together on the sofa, flipping through Steve's book from last spring and summer. Bucky swings by the bedroom to pull on some slacks with a negligently clipped suspender, flicks on the radio, and sits with them on Hannah's other side, drinking a beer and leaning into the sofa corner, tossing in the occasional saucy comment but mostly just watching Steve and Hannah talk about art.

Then the music changes, a rolling trumpet fanfare starting up the next tune, and Hannah lifts her head. "Oh, I love this song!" 

Bucky jumps up suspiciously fast. "May I have this dance?" Steve gives him a fisheye, as he'd really been enjoying Hannah's perspective on his style and her side warm against his, but he sees the way her face brightens as she looks up at Bucky before she glances back at him. 

Besides, there's the chance to see them in motion, so he nods, giving her a smile. She kisses his cheek, a warm soft smooch, before bouncing to her feet, and Steve almost forgot she's wearing nothing under Bucky's shirt. _Almost._ Pressing the book down on his lap, he flips to the back and finds a couple of blank pages, reaches under the end table for his box of sharpened pencil stubs, and watches intently. Bucky folds his fingers around her upraised hand, spreading his out across her lower back as he pulls her close. The borrowed shirt curves over her bottom, just kissing the tops of her thighs, and her slender calves firm into definition as she rises on tiptoes, stepping into the swing of dancing. 

They spin between table, couch, and wall, making a spiral out of the blocky space as they dance, and Steve watches raptly as he sketches, the swing of Hannah's soft braid, her arched feet, the strength in Bucky's arm as he sweeps her around the room. They smile at him whenever they face him, Bucky over Hannah's head, Hannah past Buck's arm, between smiling at each other, sharing him in warming glances that make him blush with happiness.

Steve sees the way Bucky leans forward a little to Hannah, how she fits cradled in his arm, fine boned figure framed by his sturdiness. She's closer to Steve's height than Bucky is, and to his build, and Steve wonders if this is how he'd look in Bucky's arms if he could see himself, fragile and safe and happy, his cheek pressed to Bucky's chest where Hannah's does as she smiles. Bucky meets his eyes, glances down at her, and waggles his eyebrows, and Steve grins helplessly and looks down at his half-done sketch, flushing hot all over, overwhelmed by delight.

The song ends with a crescendo flourish, and Steve looks up again as Hannah claps, bouncing on her heels, giggling as Bucky sweeps a low bow. She curtseys skirtlessly, hands fluttering alongside her sleek bare thighs, and Steve presses down hard on his lap, telling his body, not yet, not yet.

"Thank you for the dance!" Bucky says brightly. "You're not half bad!"

"Thank you," Hannah replies, the purr back in her voice. "I like dancing, I just… " as Bucky's eyebrows tilt high, "… don't like dance halls." She folds her arms around herself as she explains, her shoulders going up, and Steve wants to get up and reach out, take her hand and stroke her arm till her shoulders relax. "Because I'm so small." Steve nods involuntarily, knowing what she means. "There's always some idiot who wants to show off by tossing a girl in the air, they don't even ask first. When I was nineteen this boor didn't catch me and I broke my drawing arm." Steve winces, and so does Bucky, reaching out a hesitant hand. "I lost a whole semester, and I had to stay home."

Hannah frowns at the memory, her lower lip pushing out; Bucky's hand wobbles emptily in midair and Steve's breath catches in his throat. "What jerks," Bucky agrees cautiously, "I sure won't toss you", and Hannah looks up at him a moment, then smiles just enough, her mouth pursing back up into a pink heart as she takes his offered hand and Steve flips the page to sketch them like that.

"I know you're a gentleman," she tells Bucky, swinging her hips into a step, "Steve vouched for you." She turns to smile at Steve, holding out her other hand. "And I can vouch for Steve," she continues, as if he's restrained by good behavior rather than lack of strength. "If I may be forward again…" She and Bucky squeeze and let go, and she steps closer, arms out, shoulder bared, hem fluttering breezily around the tops of her thighs. "Come dance with me?"

Steve's dick swells against the weave of his shorts, the pencil slips between his sweaty fingers, the music's slow and sweet and he wants to wrap his arms around her and sway to it, wants to kiss her and pull off the few scraps of clothes they're wearing, wants to be the gentleman she believes he is. "I, um, I should finish this sketch, you and Buck're very inspiring."

Bucky rolls his eyes. Hannah smiles wider. "I'm sure we are," she murmurs as she steps closer. "And joining us will be inspiring too." She folds her hand around Steve's, and as he looks up into her warm luminous eyes the sketchbook seems to slide right off his lap.

In fact Bucky's sliding it off, grinning cheerfully, his eyes heavy-lidded as he pries the pencil from Steve's fingers. Steve surrenders, but not without warning Hannah as he pushes himself up, "I'm not the hoofer Buck is."

"I like who you are," Hannah answers, draping her arm behind his neck, tucking her front to his so seamlessly his head spins. She smiles an inch from his lips, folding her hand into his, and says, "Isn't this better than a dance hall," as she lays her head on his shoulder, her warm belly cushiony against his throbbing dick, her warmth surrounding Steve as Bucky watches them with folded arms and a sweet wicked smile. Steve staggers into the gentle steps of the dance and Hannah swings her hips against his thighs as she follows; they shuffle around the little room, the music soaking in, and Steve's eyes fall closed, his cheek settles onto Hannah's soft hair, as the dance carries them like a sensual cloud.

The tempo shifts just a tick, hands on Steve's shoulder almost startle him but they're Bucky's, broad and familiar, left curling around his bicep, right sliding down his arm to curl around Hannah's waist. Bucky tucks himself behind Steve, almost too tight to breathe, never too tight, and Steve can feel he's hard too, pressed hot and rigid to the small of his back. Steve shudders, murmuring "Buck," into Hannah's hair, and as she sighs happily Bucky kisses his nape just under his hairline, and they dance their three-way dance. As the song rises to its close, Bucky slips his other hand behind Hannah, his deep breath pushing his firm chest against Steve's damp sensitized back, and picks them both up to swing them round. Hannah's grip on Steve tightens as she gasps just like she did during lovemaking, Steve can't say a word for breathlessness, and Bucky puffs a chuckle into his hair as he sets them on their feet.

The announcer comes on this time, listing the songs, and none of them listen. "C'mon, pretty lady," Bucky murmurs low against Steve's throat, and Hannah tips her head up to look at him across Steve, who can only blush and teeter on weakening knees. "Let's get him to bed."

"Absolutely," Hannah agrees, and they don't let go of Steve all the way into the bedroom.

********* 

"I've got an idea," Bucky says as he sits down behind Steve on the bed, and Hannah pulls her sweet mouth from Steve's, pressing cheek to cheek instead.

"This'd better be good, Barnes," Steve mutters. It was a really nice kiss.

"The best, pal," Bucky assures him, holding the condom packet past Steve's hip, plastering himself hotly to Steve's back. "Hannah, how'd you like to be top slice in a Steve sandwich?"

"Sounds delicious," Hannah answers, giggling as she lays her hand in Bucky's, and Steve's about to tell Bucky what a bad influence he is when he gets it and twists around as fast as he can inside Hannah's hold. 

Bucky's eyes are deep and dark, twinkling in the lamplight, he's got the Vaseline jar in his hand and drapes the other on Steve's hip as he asks, soft and deep, "You trust me, Stevie?"

Steve wants to laugh and splutter, to punch Bucky and kiss him. "I knew you weren't as drunk as I was, you skunk," he accuses, amazed that Bucky even remembered the fantasies Steve let out on that night. Bucky just grins, slow and wide, and Hannah breathes on Steve's other side, watching them be idiots for each other. "I -- " Steve wants to say no to this in front of Hannah, and longs to say yes, to feel them both at the same time. "Hannah's the guest, if anyone should get special attention…"

Bucky just tilts his head back, seeing right through Steve, and leans in, breath a warm caress over Steve's ear. "I wanna fill you up and make you feel good all over," he whispers, making heat well up in Steve's cheeks, then tugs Steve back a little and rests his chin on his head. "I can hold you both up, I think, and I've wanted to try it for ages, and now we've got a girl who's game." Steve looks sideways at Hannah's reckless grin. "Right, pretty lady?"

"Yes indeed, Bucky," she answers, waving agreement, the green packet in her hand contrasting with her pretty pink breasts. "Steve, can we? I'd like to."

Steve looks into her eager luminous eyes, and waits long enough to feel Bucky actually holding his breath, trembling just a little. Bucky really does want this, Steve thinks, not so much to be the one on top but to team up with Hannah and concentrate on him. Steve kinda wants to feel that teamwork. He tips his head back, grazing his teeth along the tender skin under Bucky's jaw, mutters "Yeah," into his throat and bites down sharply on the tendon, grinning into it as Bucky's fingers spasm on his hip, as Hannah gasps sympathetically. Point made, Steve kisses the bite and tips his head up to smirk at Hannah and echo her, "Absolutely."

Hannah's smile blooms to a grin as she reaches for Steve, winding both her lovely slender arms around his neck, her luminous eyes darkening like moonset as they fall shut, as she kisses him. Tugged forward by her gentle weight, Steve rocks up on his knees, sinking into the kiss, but he feels Bucky peel away from his back, hears his low fond mutter of "Stubborn," as he parts Steve's lower cheeks with two slicked fingers. Wrapping an arm around Hannah's waist, feeling her breasts press sweetly to his chest, Steve tosses his other hand back to prod Bucky in his hard-muscled flank.

Bucky laughs a huff and smears cool slick over Steve's hole, and try as he does, braced and grounded by Hannah as he wraps his other arm around her shoulders, Steve still shudders. He can't not shudder whenever Bucky touches him there, the slightest sliding press of fingertips sending aching pleasure pulsing through him; sometimes Steve gets a grip by concentrating on the coolness of empty air rather than the heat of Bucky's fingers inside him, but now he has Hannah tucked to him, both of them at once, so overwhelming he cries out. Hannah's surprised noise tingles Steve's lips just before she pulls hers away, cupping his cheek, raising her concerned eyes to his. Steve drags in a breath to say something and that gorgeous jerk Bucky twists his fingers into Steve, knuckles sparking along the rim, so Steve's mouth falls open on a whimpering gasp, his eyes squeeze shut on Hannah's face.

"Oh!" Hannah says, as Bucky hums and pushes the next stroke a little deeper, as Steve gasps and clutches her to keep from falling, "so this is the Greek love I've read about!" Apprehension clutches Steve's chest, pushing against pleasure to press the air out of him, his eyelids snapping up as Bucky rumbles behind him and sets his other hand between his shoulder blades, but Hannah looks rapt, peering over his shoulder, softly kissing his throat as she watches Bucky work. "The art was intriguing, but life is so much more… invigorating," she murmurs against Steve's pulse, and his dick throbs untouched just from hearing her.

"Been looking at dirty pictures, pretty lady?" Bucky rumbles, husky and low, and Steve throbs all over, groans and presses his face to her damp satiny throat. Bucky pushes a fraction harder, silk-rough fingers sliding in deep enough to press the spot that makes him see stars, and Steve muffles his moan in Hannah's skin as he shudders again.

"Pursuing the broadest possible education," Hannah parries, and Steve laughs his next gasp, panting as he kisses her throat.

Bucky laughs too, wraps his free arm around both of them and murmurs, "Come on and kiss me with that mouth," and Steve would smile if he weren't moaning, as he listens to Hannah giggle, as he feels them shift before and behind him, as they kiss beside his ear. "So what else was in that broad education?" Bucky murmurs, as Hannah presses her cheek to Steve's, as he feels her smile. "Anything about cocksucking?"

Hannah's spine stiffens, she pulls back a bit inside Bucky's looped arm. "Sorry," she says, and kisses Steve's cheek. "I don't like to."

"Aww," Bucky starts, tightening his hold, and Steve fights pleasure stronger than pain and shoves his head up.

"Buck," he gasps, word by word, forehead braced on Hannah's shoulder. "Don't. She doesn't, it's okay."

"Mmph," Bucky grumbles, and kisses Steve's nape. "You don't know what you're missing, pretty lady. He tastes damn good." Steve nudges Bucky's calf with his heel, and Bucky subsides with another grumbly kiss to his nape.

"He feels good, too." Hannah sounds like she's smiling as she traces a hand lightly down Steve's ribs and side. Steve manages to push his eyes open and she beams her smile on him, wrapping her fingers around his dick, kissing his cry off his lips. "Don't worry, Bucky," she says between kisses, "I'll do my part."

"Never doubted it," Bucky rumbles, sinking his fingers full depth into Steve, back and in faster and faster yet as Hannah strokes and kisses Steve through his sobs of pleasure, as he clings to her and Bucky holds them both, working Steve like he's trying to get him off with this alone, or maybe just pushing to test how much he can take. Steve plants a hand on the mattress, holding Hannah tightly as he dares with the other, and pushes back into it.

Tingling all over, Steve gasps over Hannah's lips, and Bucky leans forward, pressing his broad chest to Steve's back, breathing deliberately, Steve can feel it, feel the effort Bucky's putting into keeping his breaths slow and even as his fingers piston and Hannah's twist and stroke. Steve shakes all over as he wrenches his lungs under control, matching Bucky's breathing like they've done so many times before, in bed and out of it. All the extra air seems to bubble up to Steve's brain, a fizz of dizzying pleasure as Hannah kisses him and Bucky nibbles his ear and they both work him till he feels he might explode or die.

Bucky gasps, hot over Steve's ear, "Hope you're ready, Stevie," twisting his fingers to make Steve see rushing stars. "Can't hold out anymore." He drags them out, clutches Steve's hips with both hands and hauls him back, and Hannah hums surprise and digs her fingers into Steve's shoulder, hanging onto him. Steve nods, smiling into Hannah's throat as his lips slide along her pulse; he trembles as Bucky kisses his nape, burying his moan in Hannah's soft-skinned shoulder as Bucky nudges into him, one slow thick slide all the way in. 

Hannah inhales slow and deep, her mouth pressed tenderly to Steve's shoulder; he can feel her watching, but when Bucky rumbles, "Like what you see, huh?" Steve flushes impossibly hotter all over, all the prickles rising to invisible flames as Hannah smiles against his skin. "Shoulda sucked his brain out," Bucky mutters into Steve's hair, sliding hands up his chest, and Steve tries to say something, anything, but can only gasp at the heavy fullness of Bucky inside him and Hannah's warmth pressed to him. 

"We'll just have to fuck it out, then," Hannah murmurs as she smooths the rubber down onto Steve; Bucky shudders into a low growl, and Steve shudders with him, around him, under the irresistible lustiness of curses in such a refined voice. Bucky lets go of Steve to reach for Hannah and Steve loops one arm behind Bucky's neck, cupping Hannah's shoulder in the other as she lets loose a breathy little huff and shimmies into place, sliding her belly against Steve's. She sinks down onto him in a heated squeezy slide and his breath catches, his body too awash in pleasure to bother with trivialities like breathing.

"Enjoying yourself?" Bucky's lips plushly stroke Steve's ear, and Steve can't even answer beyond a belly-deep groan and a languid nod, draping his head backwards onto Bucky's shoulder as Hannah exhales a soft rising noise and wiggles on him, around him. If this brings on an attack it'll still be worth it, pressed between and wrapped up by the two of them. "Settled there, pretty lady?" Hannah nods, humming agreement, and Bucky's strong arms wrap around both of them as he squeezes them together. "Okay, one and two and three--" Bucky kisses his ear and Hannah kisses his cheek and they both _move_ , pushing a whimper from between Steve's ribs and up his throat. "Oh, fuck," Bucky gasps as Hannah cries out, and suddenly -- 

suddenly they're bouncing, racing, Hannah's little weight driving Steve down all the harder on Bucky's dick, Bucky's thrusts shoving Steve up deeper into her rippling heat, his whole body flooding with the unbearable delight he can feel coursing through all three of them like an overloading fuse. Hannah throws her head back and screams, her nails sparking down Steve's neck, their thumping hearts separated only by frail breastbones and thinner skin; Bucky swears fervently into Steve's hair, his thighs trembling under Steve's, his arms steel-cable taut around them both, his thrusts shuddering through Steve toes to top, blurring together as they speed up into one revolving stream of pounding ecstasy. 

Hannah shouts gloriously as she comes; Steve feels her sweet noise vibrate through her body and helplessly cries out in answer, driven almost beyond his own climax, both overstimulated and desperate. Bucky smears his parted lips along Steve's bicep, bites down on his shoulder and speeds his rolling hips even more, and it's Steve's turn to scream, Hannah moaning sympathetically against his chin as pleasure shatters him into a million little bits, fiery fracture lines zigzagging under his eyelids, everything surging and tumbling into motion --

The mattress whacks Steve's elbow and knees; Bucky flipped them. He's pulling them up with one hand on each waist, fingers digging in tight as he chants, "Fuck me, fuck me, oh my fucking God fuck me", as he pounds Steve right across the line between pleasure and pain, smearing it out of existence. Hannah arches up, crushing all her softnesses against Steve's bony shivering frame, her thighs banding his ribs as she cries out again; Steve aches to watch her face and can't pry his eyes open as Bucky shoves in to the hilt, sobbing against the back of Steve's neck, and comes in deep pulses inside him, shuddering all over with each spasm.

There's an airless moment while everyone melts, their clutching hands falling loose, and Hannah whimpers, "Oh, oh." Steve can't find the strength to lift his face from her sweet-salty hair. Bucky trembles, still inside Steve, drops of his sweat pattering down onto Steve's back. Steve's trying to remember how to make his lungs work when Bucky's hands tighten again and Bucky, still panting, tugs him up off Hannah. 

As Bucky hauls him over Steve tries to plant his hands and push himself up, to do something and not just let Bucky toss him around, but he barely manages brushing his fingertips across damp sheets before Bucky drops him more or less beside her, pulling roughly out of him as he goes. Steve's arms fold disobediently beneath him and he flops down like a rag doll, little sparkles and crackles chasing each other across his skin from the roots of his damp hair to the prickling soles of his feet. He should get the rubber off, say something so they know he can breathe, tease Buck that 'fuck me' should've been his line, smile at Hannah as he listens to her lilting gasps and feels her damp and trembling everywhere their skins touch. 

Instead of doing any of these things, anything at all, Steve passes out hard, his cheek sunk in Bucky's pillow and Hannah's soft sighing voice in his ears.


	3. Chapter Three

Steve wakes up bit by bit, pleasantly warm and a little sore, Hannah's arm slung across his waist and Bucky snoring softly into his hair. He shifts and the soreness sharpens, stickiness evident down the backs of his thighs. The sheet's down around their knees, and as Steve shifts backwards out of bed he pulls it up over Hannah's waist and Bucky's hip to keep them cozy. He pauses a moment to watch them sleep, Bucky curled around Hannah, her hair spread across the pillow, before he pulls himself away to wash up. 

Under the bathroom bulb he looks rumpled and happy, sleepy and scruffy, beard hairs catching the yellow glow. He finishes his ablutions with a careful shave, dries his face, and smiles at himself before tugging off the light. A few steps through the silent apartment and back into Bucky's bed, and as his knee hits the mattress Hannah opens her eyes, glinting in the dimness, and holds out her arms.

Marveling at this marvelous girl, Steve wraps his arms around her, and she tilts her chin up for a kiss, soft and sweet and just sleep-sour enough that he can believe she's real. He settles his head beside hers, as Bucky's chest rises and falls behind her, as she slips her knees above and below his, sleek and warm. 

"Hi," Hannah murmurs, lips brushing Steve's. "How are you?"

He's snug and sated and feels about as good as he possibly can, his arms around this beautiful girl while his best guy sleeps soundly at her back. How can he possibly put it all into any kind of words? " 'M'fine," he mumbles, making himself not look away from her clear eyes. "You okay?"

"Never better." Her smile tilts up, perfectly lopsided; Steve blinks twice, fixing Hannah's image in his mind, then leans in for another kiss, because he can, and she smothers a giggle against his lips as she kisses him back.

A flash makes Steve open his eyes, but it's just a car's lights through the window, skimming up the wall to vanish again. In its wake, Hannah lifts her hand to Steve's cheek, looking at him like he's the only thing in the world. "Thank you for letting me see that, before, letting me join in. It was so... intimate."

A fella could get drunk on that look, could drown in it happily. "I, uh, it was Bucky's idea."

Still smiling, hand still curved to Steve's face, Hannah glances back over her shoulder at Bucky tucked between them and the wall. "Thanks for sharing your dreamboat with me," she adds as she rolls back to Steve, and he doesn't even know how to agree well enough. "For awhile there, hearing about him, I thought I didn't have a chance with you."

Curious and warmed, Steve lays his hand atop hers. "What changed your mind? What'd I do right?"

She grins, sweet as triumph. "You were you." And kisses him again, soft and unhurried. Eventually the kiss smears apart, and Steve snuggles in, Hannah soft on his chest, ready to join Bucky in sleep. But she sighs a little and says, "This was so nice, this whole evening, like a little bubble out of the world."

Which makes Steve think of everything beyond this warm bed. "Yeah, it really was," he murmurs, arms around Hannah and mind flashing back to the paper that morning, the war spreading across Europe and Asia. 

Hannah hums and asks, "What're you thinking about?" 

Still distracted by his thoughts, Steve tells her. "The world outside our nice bubble."

She nods, shifting a little, not away. "There's the election, and war might start..."

"It's started already." Steve looks down out of his thoughts, back towards Hannah. She settles her head on his shoulder, listening as he flounders onwards. "We're gonna end up in it. It's just a question of when."

Hannah's eyes widen. "Would you go fight in it?"

Instead of _if they'll take me_ , Steve stoutly insists, "Of course." It's the least he can do as a man and an American, as the son of a father who died in the Great War.

Looking startled, Hannah lifts her head. "Really? Would it be worth it, fighting in someone else's war?"

"Sure it will be!" Steve pulls his hand off her skin, gesturing to emphasize his point. "It's already across three continents and more, it's everyone's war."

For a moment Hannah just looks at him, eyes round, mouth closed. Then her eyebrows tilt down, the corner of her mouth tilts up, as Steve realizes his heart's pounding for better reasons than politics. "You look good when you get all worked up like that," she says, and as she kisses him his hand drifts down to smooth over her skin again, down her shoulder blade and slender back to her waist. 

She lets him up, and he manages to ask, "Only then?" cheekily enough to keep her smiling as she shakes her head, her teeth glinting brightly as her eyes.

"Noisy," Bucky mumbles, lifting a heavy arm to drape it across both of them. "Cant'cha let a fella get some sleep?" He tugs them close, burying his face in Hannah's hair, and as she giggles silently she brushes her fingertips across Steve's lips, lays her head back down, and closes her laughing eyes.

So Steve shuts his too, and sleep's nearer than he thought, his heart slowing easily as he sinks into floating warmth. Dozing with Hannah's cheek on his shoulder and Bucky's hand tucked behind his back, Steve idly wonders if she'd enjoy a honeymoon in Niagara Falls, if he could ever earn enough to take her to Paris, if they could smuggle Bucky along in a really big suitcase.

********* 

A golden wash of light wakes Steve to the morning, Hannah curled up alongside him, Bucky sitting up against the wall. He blinks but everything stays hazy, glowing and beautiful, soaking into his memory like ink into paper. He looks over at her sleep-smoothed face, the light caught in her luminous hair, and up past the curve of her porcelain shoulder to Bucky watching them from heavy-lidded bottomless eyes.

Steve looks at Bucky looking at them, at his freshly shaven cheeks and the defined little cleft of his chin, at his quietly downslung mouth and up again to those long-lashed infinite eyes, darkness thinly ringed with smoky blue. Bucky tips his head back a bit, holding Steve's gaze, and Steve shifts out from under Hannah's soft heft and pushes up on his hands, carefully scooting around her finely shaped ankles and feet. When his knees nudge Bucky's thigh he turns away a little, thrumming with Bucky's nearness the whole time he takes to drape the sheet carefully up over Hannah's smooth sleek back.

Steve turns around to find one edge of Bucky's mouth curling up; he brushes his knuckles lightly down Steve's cheek, wraps his hand behind Steve's neck and pulling him in. Bucky shoves the kiss deep like he's planting a flag, nearly down to where Steve's tonsils were, and Steve grips his hard rounded biceps, sucks his tender lower lip and grazes it with a sharp tooth, staking a claim right back. No matter whose else he hopes to be, he'll always be Bucky's, he has to know that.

Bucky breathes a chuckle, lightly bites Steve's upper lip, and pulls back out of the kiss to rest their foreheads together, his eyelashes fanned out, his eyelids silky. Steve's just thinking of pushing up to kiss them when he hears a sweet sigh from behind him. His heart lurches but Bucky holds him in place with that hand behind his head, grins brightly and murmurs, "Morning, pretty lady."

"Mmm, good morning," Hannah purrs, and Steve can feel her roll over, the mattress shifting. As he grabs Bucky's wrist, preparing to pry himself loose, she continues, "You two carry on, I'll just get my sketchbook."

Picturing her delicate hand sketching them like this, her pinkening cheeks as she watches him and Bucky at it, Steve tingles all over, tensing and relaxing at the same time. "Mind your modeling," he puts in, mostly to have said something, and listens to Hannah's giggle and his own heart's pound and Bucky's indrawn breath as he pulls Steve back in, wrapping his broad arm around Steve's waist.

Steve just means a showy kiss, something worth drawing, scandalous and sweet, but Bucky slides a sly tongue over his lip and knowing fingers down his spine, and Steve shudders hot, suddenly as up for the morning as if they didn't spend all evening fucking and dancing, shoving himself up against Bucky's firm chest as he feels Hannah's gaze like more hands on his skin. Her pencil scuffs across her paper and Bucky sighs over Steve's lips, tipping his head back, and kisses him again. His hand slides around Steve's hip, nails scratching fine fire-bright lines up his inner thigh a moment before familiar fingers curl as breathtakingly as ever around his dick. Steve moans before he can catch himself, loud and desperate.

Hannah moans too, and even while Steve's in Bucky's hold she tugs at him. Hauling himself out of the kiss, he turns around enough to see her leaning forward on her hands, breasts quivering delicately as her chest heaves, hair a wild red cloud around her eager face. "Oh I can't just watch anymore," she murmurs, pushing forward, and before Steve can even glance at him Bucky chuckles against his ear, pushing his wrist back to open his arm to her. 

Steve shakes off Bucky's grip and reaches for her, mouth gone dry at the sight of her naked beauty sheened with the golden morning light. She smiles, eyes blown to amber-ringed black as she throws her arm across Steve's back, as she grips Bucky's shoulder and parts her lips into a delightfully bossy kiss. Humming low against Steve's ear, Bucky kisses his way down to bite Steve's throat as he pulls a slow stroke, and Steve can't help but moan again, pinned between his new girl and his best guy, already quivering with pleasure.

And from there it goes so easy, like the three-partner dance last night, even easier than the last time they put him in the middle. Hannah tips her chin up, pressed to Steve's side so firmly he can feel every soft inch of her, and Bucky pulls his hand away just long enough to lick it and brings it back wet and silky-rough, stroking with sweet ruthlessness, slicking him further with his pre come. Steve moans helplessly into Hannah's mouth and she laughs and keeps kissing him, Bucky chuckles deep and kisses his chin and cheek and the top of his head, sinking the bright hot edge of teeth delicately into the rim of his ear --

Steve's skin tightens all over, his fingers dig into Hannah's waist and Bucky's nape, and he comes so hard he sees flashing lights, Hannah's lips shaping into a tender smile brushing his whimpering mouth, Bucky pressing a grin against his ear. He blinks his eyes open and the air is full of dazzling light all around them, like they're floating together. It makes nothing but sense to shift, tugging Hannah up as she giggles breathlessly, and help her settle her back to Bucky's chest. Bucky braces them both, and Steve leans up and kisses him, feeling Hannah's lips softly brush his throat as Bucky's tongue strokes over his. He pulls back and stares at Hannah shining her smile on him, for as long as he can before he has to kiss her more roughly, her cheeks and chin and the fine skin over her collarbones.

He was thinking of kissing the whole way down, nestling his face between her legs as Bucky holds her, but she grips his hair and holds him to the kiss, so he sends his hands where he'd thought to put his mouth, over her nipples and their haloes, down her sides and spanning her waist, over her belly and between her thighs as she trembles and sighs into his mouth. Bucky wraps an arm across Steve's back, holding them together as Steve kisses and thinks and touches Hannah with both hands, gently but firmly, feeling how she moves in answer.

She growls her kitten-growl, grabs his wrist and shifts his hand down, rocking her hips towards his fingers, and he chuckles his comment, slides two fingers inside her and props his thumb up at the precise angle. She shudders all over, gasping against his lips; overwhelmed by the wet rippling heat inside her, Steve tries to pull back to watch her face, but Hannah flings her arm around his shoulders and rolls her hips, fucking herself on his fingers more than he's moving them himself. Obediently, delightedly, he keeps that hand in place, lifts the other to her breast as Bucky's hands press on his back, his arms full of Hannah, Bucky's wrapped around both of them.

Bucky's mouth ripples familiarly across Steve's forehead; Hannah moans, imperiously turning her face, pulling her lips from Steve's to demand Bucky's, and a laugh bubbles out of Steve, smushed against Bucky's jaw. Bucky rumbles and Steve bites his ear just as Hannah shudders into coming with a sweet little scream. 

She drops her head back, gasping, and Steve pries his hand away from her custardy little breast; she pushes against his other wrist and he gently slides his fingers out of clinging velvet. His heart hammers against his tight ribs, but he's worked through worse breathlessness for less reward, and it's Bucky's turn, his cock hard and red by Hannah's porcelain-pink hip. Her little fingers curve around it as her other hand slides into Steve's hair, and she tugs him up, heavy-lidded and smiling, to kiss Bucky's parted lips. 

Leaning on Bucky's heaving chest, Steve kisses him slowly and lavishly, as Hannah breathes out happy little gasps and strokes his scalp, as together they jerk Bucky off, fingers overlapping on his pulsing cock. It's a sweet moment, Bucky's arm broad across Steve's back and Hannah trembling against his front, and it doesn't last long enough before Buck groans into Steve's mouth and spills over their fingers, but they have been riling him up since they woke up. So Steve lets him up with a final kiss and sits back, looking around for the towel they had by the bed.

Hannah wriggles back too, just the loveliest shimmy up her spine as her little breasts bounce and her tousled hair sways, as she throws her arms over her head and stretches and says, "Oh, good morning! Now I'm _hungry_."

Steve's too delighted to speak, even to offer her breakfast, and beside him Bucky just gulps down a breath and laughs.

********* 

That morning sets Steve's high-water mark for happiness for years to come.

As soon as she can stand, Hannah gets to her delicate feet and Steve watches her walk away, pink and warm in the golden morning light; she shuts the bathroom door and he slumps bonelessly, winded and delighted and too stunned to even move. Bucky props up the wall again and slings his long legs across Steve's thighs, and they just listen to water run in companionable, fucked-out quiet.

When Hannah reappears she’s impossibly put together, her hair braided, Bucky’s tee swinging around her thighs like a flapper dress, and opens her perfect mouth and says, “I’m sorry I’m so disheveled, but I thought you gentlemen wouldn’t mind so much.”

Steve gapes. Bucky grins. After a long moment of just staring at Hannah, until her smile starts to droop, Steve manages to stammer out, “But you look perfect,” and she blushes, pink down to her shoulders, as her smile widens to shining.

For the rest of his life, Steve remembers that morning as a hazy golden delight. After some breakfast and a couple showers, Hannah pulls a small, pink locking book from her purse and leads them back into their bedroom. Bucky stretches out across the foot of the bed, gleaming wet in the warm light, and Steve and Hannah sit up against the wall, leaning on each other’s shoulders as they sketch him. Steve watches Bucky watch Hannah drawing him, biting his lower lip with two broad front teeth as he holds shivering-still beneath her keen eyes, and feels his own exhausted dick tingle inside his shorts. 

When she turns her page towards Steve, he sees she’s highlighted the glints of water on Bucky’s skin, including along the plump line of his dick. He blushes hot, and she giggles at him, but when he looks up her cheeks are splashed with bright red to match.

Without even thinking about it, Steve leans in and kisses her, and Hannah bubbles laughter against his lips, shapes her soft mouth to his, and kisses him back.

“This I gotta see,” Bucky rumbles from the bed’s end, and Hannah squeaks, pulling back from Steve to clutch her drawing to her bosom. Steve blinks but Bucky grins, eyebrows tilting wickedly as he rolls onto all fours and starts stalking up the bed.

Steve glances back at Hannah, because teasing’s only fun if everyone’s in the game, and she smiles at him and relents, turning the book to show Bucky. He blinks too, and he’s always had a poker face Steve envies but the edge of his ear does glow. “Goodness,” he says, sitting back, “now I know how pin-ups feel.”

“Steve’s drawn you much more sensually than this,” Hannah says, “even with your clothes all on,” and it’s not untrue. 

“Wouldn’t bet against it,” Bucky agrees, leaning in to kiss Hannah lightly, just a long soft touch of full lips to delicate lips. Steve has to watch them, his heart swelling so sweetly it almost aches, and can’t even begin to gather breath to protest until they start pulling back.

Bucky’s eyebrows are still wicked, his arm wrapping strong around Steve’s waist as he kisses him too, before he can even say anything. Hannah laughs, and says, “Keep right on with that,” and Steve hears her page turn, her pencil start scratching against the next sheet. 

Steve’s back stiffens, but his heart pounds eagerness instead of alarm. Bucky keeps the kiss light, his arm loose, waiting for Steve’s decision, and Steve draws in a breath, punches Bucky lightly in the shoulder, slides an arm round his neck and goes for it as Hannah whoops delicately and sketches triple-time.

Bucky whoops too, tingling Steve’s mouth, wraps both arms across his back and dips him just enough to arrange them perfectly for a good artistic kiss, but Steve still makes sure they spend plenty long enough at it for Hannah to draw all she wants. They come up breathless and both half-hard, and Hannah’s eyes are shining, and Steve wants, deep down between his belly and his balls, in every inch of his buzzing skin.

But they’re out of rubbers and it’s morning and they’ve all been abed several extra hours.

So they let go of each other, and Bucky kisses Hannah’s cheek, just a fleeting buss, before getting up.

When Steve makes to leave too, Hannah catches his wrist and asks, so sweetly, “would you help me get dressed?” It’s not that she really needs his help, he knows, but he can’t deny he enjoys being her clothes rack, or fastening her braid with her white rose, back into place at the crown of her glowing red hair. He tosses on enough to be respectable, trousers and suspenders and vest and shirt, and Hannah buttons his shirt for him, leans in and kisses the apple of his throat.

Steve can’t even speak. He just takes her hand and stares at her beautiful face, dazed with wonder. She regards him in return, and he almost feels worth looking at, the way he’s only felt under a few special gazes. His first girl’s, Bucky’s, his Ma’s. 

Then Hannah blinks, and pulls her hand back, replacing it with her little pink sketchbook. “Let’s draw each other,” she suggests, turning to head out of the room, and Steve follows, watching the wisps of loose hair shimmer around her head and not the sway of her slender hips. Bucky’s at the stove, wearing the less-battered apron over his bare chest and suspenders, and Hannah glances at.him too, beauty regarding beauty, and Steve’s so happy he could almost die.

Instead, he sits something like calmly at the table, covers Hannah’s beautifully lewd sketch of them kissing, and starts to draw her, her head bent over his sketchbook. 

“Always with the drawing,” Bucky says warmly overhead, setting down the teapot and some clinking cups. His timing’s perfect - Hannah looks up beaming, and Steve curves one more soft line around her hair and sets his pencil down. “It’s not much, but my Ma made the jam,” Bucky goes on as he sets down a jar of Mrs. Barnes’s blueberry preserves and a stack of toast.

“Tea?” Steve asks, because Bucky hasn’t gotten his daily dose of sass yet. “What are we, Brits?”

“Someone drank up all the coffee,” Bucky parries, as Hannah giggles. 

“Someone tall and cleft chinned!” Steve knows he didn’t. Hannah’s giggle opens into a sweet laugh, her head tipping back, and Steve looks over at her and helplessly thinks that he could have breakfast just like this, every day till forever.

She calms to a smile, eyes sparkling, and pushes his sketchbook towards him. “We’d better clear these away, then.”

He picks it up, glancing over her drawing of him, how she raised his chin and shaded his cheekbone, and hopes to win another laugh as he asks, “So who’s this handsome fella?”

“Oh _you_.” But she does laugh again, even as she scolds him; he holds out her pink book and she presses it into his hand. “Let me see your self-portrait then.”

“Toast’s getting cold,” Bucky puts in, and Steve considers answering that. Instead he turns the page on his sketch of Hannah and obediently doodles himself as she watches him and drinks some tea. When he’s done she takes both and holds them up for Bucky’s inspection, and he peers at them for the length of half a slice, munching and making thinking noises.

“I like yours better, Miss Hannah,” Bucky judges, and as Steve snorts she laughs triumph, handing him his book and tucking hers back into her handbag. 

“I like hers better too,” Steve argues, “it’s just too kind to the subj—“ Hannah shoves toast into his mouth, and Bucky nods approvingly as Steve splutters a little and grabs the slice before it drops.

“No it ain’t,” Bucky says, eyes all smoky dark, and Hannah nods back at him, and Steve has the distinct sense they’re not just talking about art.

“I’m so glad you understand, Mr. Bucky.” Hannah gets up as she speaks. “Unfortunately, I think I need to go. My aunt will be back in early afternoon.” 

The lump of toast jams against the sudden lump in Steve’s throat. Bucky gets up, dusts himself off, and lifts Hannah’s hand to his smiling mouth. Steve manages to swallow, but drops his toast as he watches her eyelashes flutter and her waist curve under Bucky’s broad hand, as Bucky pulls her in for a long, lush kiss. “I’m glad I met you, Miss Hannah,” Bucky tells her. 

“And I you,” she answers, softly, impeccably. “Thank you fro my delightful evening.” She turns, all grace, and as Bucky lets her go she reaches for Steve’s hand. “Walk me to the subway?”

“Of course,” Steve stammers. “Of course.” He stumbles into his shoes and Hannah slips her on and comes to meet him at the door. Bucky comes up on Steve’s other side, and leans in, eyes on Hannah, to kiss Steve, just a warm peck but all the more thrilling under her eyes. 

And with that, they set out.

********* 

Steve climbs the station steps, sunlight spilling over his face, warmth pushing outwards all along his skin. Just standing there with Hannah’s hand in his, until the train announced itself with an approaching rumble, just kissing her one more time, her mouth a tender curve pressed to his. As he fumbled out a token she whispered in his ear, “Thank you for my best night in New York, and thank Bucky for me," and he grinned and blushed and nearly dropped it before getting it into the slot. He can’t get her out of his head, how he watched her as she shimmied through the turnstile, how she turned to wave as she stepped aboard, looking at him until the doors closed and the train roared away… Steve catches the concrete bolster at the top, happily unable to catch his breath, his eyes and his heart full of light, his new best girl filling his thoughts and his best guy waiting for him at home.

Steve’s halfway there, almost floating on air, until he remembers what he forgot: to ask for her address, her number, her stop. The realization swats him back to earth. Hannah knows where he is, but he doesn’t know how to find her, and she’s leaving soon.

The world pulses with the thumping in Steve’s ears. Her kisses didn’t lie, he knows. She sure as hell liked Bucky, but Steve’s the one she took by the hand. He knows she enjoyed him, but he also knows, standing stock-still in the middle of the sidewalk as the blameless beautiful day goes on all around him, if she wanted to Hannah could’ve told him how to find her.

She didn’t. She’s gone.


	4. The Codas That Would Have Been

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This story is as finished as it’s going to get, so let me tell you about the codas I intended to write for it, long long ago.

This story is as finished as it’s going to get, so let me tell you about the codas I intended to write for it, long long ago.

Coda #1: Hannah in LA in 1944, working for an ad agency, being wooed by two men. [This is where I explain why she ran.] She pops out for lunch and a little air, and buys a newspaper, and finds splashed across the front a picture of Captain Rogers and his Howling Commandoes after a successful raid on HYDRA. And with her keen artist’s eye she recognizes Steve. His chin’s twice as wide and as she reads the rest of the article and sees the other pictures she finds that all of him’s twice as big and she has no idea how that could happen, but she knows it’s Steve. Not least because right behind him, pouty mouth pulled into a determined frown, stands Sergeant Barnes, and she remembers him too.

That afternoon she mentioned it to the other girls in the drawing office and they say he’s probably a cousin of her classmate from NYC art school. Over dinner that night she mentions her theory to Bob Dannerville and he laughs it off and says she’s imagining things, and when she pulls the article out of her purse he doesn’t look at it and starts getting annoyed, so she puts it away and changes the subject. 

But at dinner the next night she brings it up to Kevin Mollohan, and he actually listens to her theory that Captain America could be her Stevie from NYC. Kevin asks about him, and she says, “If he'd asked me to stay I would have, so I arranged things so he didn't get a chance to ask,“ because she "wasn't done yet". Kevin asks if she is done now and she says, “I’m not done, but I think I could start a whole new chapter with you."

Coda #2: One snowy evening in France, the HCs are waiting for extraction. Steve’s been shot twice in the hip but keeps trying to walkl, so Bucky’s holding Steve sitting in his lap while his healing flesh works the bullets out and Bucky keeps him from trying to get up and take watch, and they chat about girls they’ve known. 

"Remember your little art school minx, Hannah?” Bucky can’t think of her without a hot rush of mixed emotions. She fit Steve so well and hurt him so badly. “What we got up to with her? I couldn't pile you and a dame into my lap these days, that's for sure." "Bucky…" "What? You'd break my dick off!" "SARGEANT" "Don't start with that, Steve. You can be Captain again after you've got these bullets out. Till then, I'm taking care of you. This talk is medicinal." Steve says by the morning he was ready to propose. He went by their meeting place every day for a week hoping to see her, and still occasionally wonders why she left. He knows it wasn't because she didn't like him skinny. Wondering what she'd think of him now: 

Bucky says she'd like him even though he put on a few pounds. Steve laughs, gasps, buries his face in Bucky's shoulder as the bullets break skin: hot blood over Bucky's fingers as he digs them out. As he wraps up the wound (field bandage) they discuss Peggy, who's seen Steve both ways. Bucky approves of her liking Steve. 

Coda 3: 1964. Hannah’s sitting in her suburban New Jersey home, at her desk in the study, working on a political cartoon (she sends them anonymously to the Village Voice) when her son Kevin Two bursts through the front door calling cheerfully for her. She tucks the cartoon under the work she’s doing on the latest children’s book, comes into the kitchen and finds him waving a new book excitedly. He tells her that the librarian suggested it for his research paper on Captain America, and reads and summarizes to her about the now slightly declassified Project Rebirth. She makes astonished noises and thanks him for telling her, and then does Mom stuff until night.

After she’s put Kevin Two and Sarah to bed, Hannah finds her little travel diary-sketchbook from the ‘40s, and opens it to her drawings of Bucky naked and Bucky and Steve in a clinch, and Steve’s drawings of her and himself. Kevin’s called Kevin Two because instead of his father’s middle name Patrick his is Steven, and Sarah’s middle name is Jamie. When Kevin gets home from his business trip Hannah will tell him about this.

Coda #4: Wandering around in Brooklyn (he came over from Manhattan), Steve finds a children’s bookstore with a flyer in its window for an upcoming retrospective on cherished children’s book illustrator Hannah Bauer Mollohan. He blinks, goes in, and makes sure to write down the date of the opening reception. He also buys two random children’s books, which he gives to bored children on the train.

In the exhibition he sees Hannah’s career as a children’s book illustrator, buys a stack of her books, and smiles for whole minutes at a time. At the reception he meets Emily Mollohan Amraddian, granddaughter and curator, a dignified lady with Hannah’s eyes, who calls him “Captain Steve, just as my grandmother described.” Steve is of course surprised and confused, and Emily goes on and tells him that Hannah told her, told everyone important, that she met Steve in art school and knew he’d be a hero. But Hannah told Emily that he and Barnes were inseparable even then. Hannah asks him to coffee and he accepts.

When Hannah meets him for coffee she brings out a familiar little pink diary and says, “There’s a page missing,” with a dimply little smirk that makes Steve blush. She semi-forcibly lends it to Steve and pats his arm and he blushes more. 

That night he looks through her diary and sketchbook of her travels, and finds the torn-out page, a little fragment containing Bucky’s toes, and after it the portrait he drew of her and his own angular, pointy-nosed self portrait on the other side. Hannah had added some background shading, almost making his image glow, and underneath she wrote “Captain Steven Rogers, d1945”.

Steve closes the book and sits with it on his knee, as the evening fades into night.


End file.
